Communication Conduits

As I mentioned in last week’s article – communication is hard. Unclear communication obviously leads to misunderstandings. Unfortunately, it can also lead to hurt feelings, confusion, mistrust, and a loss of productivity. 

Two major communication pitfalls include: 

  1. The barriers to effective communication. 
  2. The components that make up an effective communication system. 

Last week I dove into the many ways that communication can break down due to internal and external barriers. You can think of this as the quality of the conversations that are happening. In this article we’ll look at structures that can be put into place to improve communication. This can be thought of as the quantity of communication occurring.

On a weekly basis I hear leaders and employees complain about the lack of communication in their company. This is almost always referring to internal communications between staff. Often this is not because of a lack of commitment to quality, intentional conversations. Rather, it’s because everyone is so busy, making it difficult to remember, or take the time to have those conversations. Once you are in a place where quality conversations are taking place, it’s equally important to establish conduits for regular and effective communication. 

Each business needs to decide who needs to know what information. That will be different for every single company based on the size, sensitivity of the information, culture, and more. This article couldn’t possibly explore all of the different scenarios for communication systems. Instead, I’m going to share some best practices that apply to most organizations. 

  • Direct Report Meetings

    On a regular basis, every staff person in a company should have conversations with the person they report to. This should be dedicated time where the supervisor listens, coaches, gives instruction, provides direction, and develops the relationship. 

Frequency varies based on the employee’s role, their experience, and their personal need for support. This is not a one-size-fits-all. I have had staff in similar positions, but very different meeting frequency. Some staff have a high need to process ideas or receive positive affirmations. Others like to be given marching orders and check-in when they come to a challenge. 

  • Regular, Effective Staff Meetings

    Most people hate staff meetings. This is usually because they are ineffective and a waste of time. Yet, this can be such an efficient tool for communication and driving work. If your staff meetings are a source of dread and frustration (or if you just want to make them the best use of time possible), check out this article. 

I want to be clear, a staff meeting should NOT be a time where everyone sits around and tells what they are working on. That isn’t what I mean by communication. Rather, all staff meetings should include a well structured agenda with components designed to provide appropriate communication.

  • Cascading Message

    Including this component in all meetings ensures that important messages and decisions are shared with the appropriate people. This practice can save a great deal of staff time. By using it consistently, you may reduce the number of people who need to attend each meeting. 

Dedicate a few minutes at the end of each meeting to determine what needs to be shared beyond the meeting attendees and who will deliver those messages. If necessary you can create a follow-up on those action steps in the next week’s agenda.  

  • State of the Company

    On a regular basis, company leaders should communicate to the whole organization about how business is going. A minimum of once a year is acceptable, quarterly is better. The entire staff team should know the current priorities and the progress being made. This is also a great opportunity to celebrate, recognize, educate, and build relationships.

  • A Two Way Street

    Quality communication includes gathering feedback from employees. While this can be built into Direct Report meetings and Staff Meetings, it’s a good practice to collect anonymous input as well. This is the best way to learn what staff are really thinking. Hopefully it goes without saying, feedback should not be collected if leadership is not going to address any concerns revealed. Collecting input and ignoring it is worse than not collecting it at all. 

Again, the above practices might not all apply to your company. But when it comes to communication, I always recommend implementing more, rather than less. You can always eliminate practices that are not effective or change things up down the road. 

While I’m on the subject of communication, I want to share a few practices for controlling email communication. Anyone who has email knows that it can completely consume your time and mental energy if you let it. The average employee spends just over 3 hours a day on email, and about two thirds of them are irrelevant! Multiply that by the number of employees in a business, and most leaders will be pretty motivated to make sure that the time spent on email is effective and efficient. 

  • Email Rules

    Critical conversations should not take place over email. Nor should sensitive information or important messages. Email is best for relaying facts, setting-up logistics, or sending out mass communications, like newsletters. A rule might be something like “Any email over 3 sentences needs to be switched to a live conversation.”

Leadership is responsible for creating an expectation for how email is used throughout a company. Telling people how to use email might seem petty. However, without established expectations, people will create their own norms. 

  • Email Coding

    Consider using a coding system for all internal emails. For example, the subject line might start with URGENT, THIS WEEK, FYI, or NO RUSH – letting the reader know how quickly they need to review the materials. With everyone using a similar system staff are better able to prioritize their time. 

  • Email Best Practices

    Here are a few more ideas on how to corral the email beast:

    • Train staff to be very selective when using cc:, bcc:, and reply all.
    • Discourage the drive towards a zero-inbox.
    • Provide staff with training on the lesser-known tools your email system provides. Things like automations, templates, folders, tags, etc. can save time and reduce busy work. 

Once communications systems are put in place, it’s important to monitor them. Otherwise, well thought out systems can deteriorate into annoying tasks. The intentionality of the structures put in place needs to be held high and team members need to be reminded of the purpose behind the process. 

Any business with more than a few people can improve their operations by focusing on communication. Quality communication involves clearly relaying messages back and forth. Creating systems for the appropriate quantity of conversations ensures the necessary communication has a platform. I believe any company that focuses on communication quality and quantity, will go far. 

Need help with creating a communication structure that works for your company? Email me at kim@athena-coco.com to schedule a free 30-minute discovery call to find opportunities for growth through improving communications. 

Kim Stewart

Kim is a mom, wife, lover of being active and the outdoors,
and helper of small businesses and nonprofits.
kim@athena-coco.com

 

Solve Problems, Don’t Just Talk About Them

Raise your hand if you find yourself talking about the same problems over and over, but never coming to solutions. Whoa, that’s a lot of hands! This is a very common challenge for business leaders, but it doesn’t have to be this way. Let me share a fairly simple process for solving problems, so you can move on and focus on what’s important to you.

Make Time to Focus

The first step is creating a system for addressing issues. I recommend spending the majority (about ⅔) of your weekly leadership team meeting focused on solving problems. After all, as the leadership team, isn’t this the most valuable way you can spend your time together? By solving problems so the business can operate more smoothly or you can remove barriers to efficiency, productivity, and work satisfaction. Plan your regular meetings so that everything else gets addressed efficiently and you can get to the work of solving problems.

List Them Out

Create a list of all the issues that need to be addressed. This list can be collected throughout the week and added to at the weekly team meeting. It may be a long list at first, but don’t let that scare you. Include everything, so that you don’t lose a key issue. If possible, it’s good to have all of the issues listed out on a flip chart or dry erase board so everyone can see them all. If that’s not an option, a printed list for each team member will work.

Prioritize

Looking at your list of issues, determine – as a group – which three are the most important ones and should be addressed first. Rank them 1, 2, and 3 in order of priority. Do not spend a lot of time on this task, keep it to about a minute. Team meetings that are 90-minutes long will give you 60-minutes to work on your issues. Starting with three will give you about 20-minutes per topic. If you are able to solve these first three issues in your allotted time, determine which one should be addressed next and start on it. Proceed this way until your time has expired.

Process

Once you have the issues you will be addressing, there are three steps to efficiently solving them:

  1. Present & Analyze – The person who proposed the issue in the first place will present it.. They will concisely share what they see as the problem. Then the group analyzes and drills down to get to the root of the problem.

    • For example: the issue may be initially presented as something like: “Sales are down 25% on blue widgets.” While this is true, and certainly an issue, drilling down may reveal a different issue. Just looking at the issue as presented, it likely seems like a problem with the blue widget sales team. However, a drill-down may reveal that production is down, so the inventory of blue widgets might not be meeting demand. Or maybe there have been quality problems with the blue widgets, scaring away potential sales. Or maybe there’s an industry-wide backlash on blue widgets. Whatever it is, the group needs to agree to the real problem surrounding the issue. Again, this should be a fairly quick part of the process.

  2. Discuss – Once the real issue is decided on, the group has a discussion. Solutions are presented. Pros and cons are debated. The meeting moderator needs to make sure all voices are heard (not just the loudest ones). Each person states their case only once.

  3. Decide – When all the stars align beautifully, a solution presents itself during the discussion and everyone is happy. In the real world, that usually doesn’t happen. In the real world, someone usually has to make the decision. The decision maker is often the top leader on the team; however, sometimes it’s another leader who will ultimately have the responsibility of rolling out the decision. Whoever it is, the decision maker takes all of the input they have gathered during the discussion, they evaluate all sides of the issue, and they make a decision. Boom – problem solved.

Next Steps

Once the decision is made, you need to think through next steps.

  • Does the decision need to be communicated out to others in the company?

  • Are there action steps to roll out the decision?

  • Is there a plan that needs to be created?

  • Who will be accountable for the next steps?

As part of the problem solving, determine what comes next and the system for following up.

To-Do List

Another component of a great team meeting is a To-Do list. This is a good place to capture the action steps and ensure there is follow-through on the decisions made. Gather all of the action steps from all the decisions made. List them in the To-Do section for the following week’s agenda. At next week’s meeting you quickly go down the list reviewing each action item. If an item has been completed you cross it off. If it’s not completed you quickly determine if it is an issue or not. If it is an issue, guess where it goes? That’s right – you add it to the Issues List.

Initially you may have so many issues that it seems overwhelming to tackle them three at a time. As you’re getting started, you may want to set aside half a day to power through your list of issues. Stick to the process above and shoot for about 20-minutes per issue. Finally getting decisions made will feel great. It will help you move things forward. And solving problems will benefit everyone in the company.

This proven process will help you solve your issues quickly. Happy problem solving!

An outside facilitator can help your team learn this process and become a problem-solving machine! Email me at kim@athena-coco.com to schedule a free 30-minute consultation. Calm the Chaos and find time to focus on what’s important to YOU.